Following The Leader!

It's a beautiful sunny day in Manchester. I'm sat in the garden, Radio 1 blaring, cider to hand and it's also the end of May. I got home on March 20th. Delayed much?


The whole point of starting this was to keep everyone informed of what I was getting up to whilst I was away as to not have to repeat everything in emails/phones calls etc. Turns out I ended up boring you all in person anyway when I got back. 


This is probably something I should just give up with but I'm in the mind frame of 'I've started so I shall finish' - much to my dismay of the fact this is going to take me absolutely flippin ages.


The last time I sat down to write any posts was in Siem Reap, Cambodia back in early February. We had just been to the Killing Fields and S21 prison, and after an extremely emotional day, the last thing I wanted to do, was speak so I pulled my energy together and sat for around 2 hours typing up the first part of the Philippines. I was concentrating that much someone thought I was doing a university dissertation! True commitment.


Another introduction spent procrastinating about nothing so here goes...... Philippines, next stop - Bohol.


As we all decided to pretty much just follow Slovenia, we all hauled our lives, i.e backpacks into reception and waited for everyone to arrive. As we were all leaving the manager kindly offered us all a goodbye beer,  so what if you get a beer at 10.30am? we are on holiday after all. All the people that said they wanted to leave from the previous day, were sitting waiting.... except for Ireland...was he or wasn't he coming? Ahhh but he was, just one little thing holding him, and us back, his bloody washing! Ireland's washing finally arrived, and we were off. It was just the matter of putting all our trust into one Slovenian guy and a Lonely Planet.


Now, this particular day was not the best travel day for me, and because I am now home, and my Mother knows the story, I can share.


The previous night was another standard messy night of drinking games on the balcony and hitting one of the local nightclubs as it was out last night on the Island. Caroline had decided to stay in that night so I was a lone ranger amongst all the boys. Everything was going well, there were no sand fights, no fireman lift/drops.. just good old dancing and drinking... until some little sh*t, presuming a local, thinks it would be fun to spike little ole me's drink.. and my oh my.. was it a rough night. Not quite your ordinary Monday night.
We had heard stories of people getting spiked in the area but you never think anything of it, well I sure did that night.


During the night we had all danced around some locals and got involved in the 'how low can you go dance', something which I always won by the way.. and it must have happened around then as I only had 2 drinks when we were out.
Slovenia and I were sat at the bar waiting to get served and I suddenly felt, a little bit funny to say the least. My jaw started to guern and my eyes started to roll around and this was definately not a 'drunk' feeling. I went outside to get some fresh air and that was that, I could no longer hold my own weight and breathing was becoming a chore. I dread to think what would have happened to me had Slovenia not been with me that night as I could have just wondered out on my own and who knows.
Because I can no longer be bothered to type Slovenia, I will use his correct name, Matej. 
Matej managed to carry me all along the beach to the main road, get me in a tuk tuk and get me back to the resort as it would have been too difficult to carry me the 5 minute walk back as I was a complete dead weight and had lost all co ordination and general limb functionality. As soon as Matej opened the door to our room, Caroline jumped out of bed and wondered what the hell was going on. It was obvious I wasn't just drunk. All I can recall is her just saying 'what's she taken', well wouldn't I like to know!
Just to lose all my dignity in one night, first off, I was made to stick my fingers down my throat so I could try and get whatever it was in my system, out. Matej was trying to convince Caroline to do it instead, as I wasn't doing a very good job, you know, what with all the crying and not knowing what the hell was going on. Luckily Caroline drew the line at that! So, I was being forced to be sick, I had a never ending moving jaw, and my head may aswell of been attached with one piece of string it was moving that much. I must have looked amazing. I certainly felt it. And as if that wasn't enough, now it was time for a nice cold shower... Caroline ever so kindly stripped me down, and sat me in it until I shivered into a prune. But oh no, this wasn't enough according to Matej, and I had to go in again, for about 10 more minutes. IT WAS COLD, and I was still crying. They both put me to bed but I was rolling around too much to even try and sleep. My mind was everywhere. All I can remember is that my eyes were rolling like tornado's and not one of my limbs would stay still. After I don't know how long, I decided I was hungry, the crisps in the room just were not satisfying enough and my mind was made up, I wanted a burger. I presume I may have been coming around at this point? After moaning for around half an hour inbetween getting water poured down my throat, Matej kindly went for a burger for me. Obviously, by the time he got back, I was asleep.. but I still ate it in the morning anyway and it was still just as tasty.


I still have no idea what on earth it was that I had that night, but it wasn't nice at all and certainly no glorious high involved. The fact that I can still remember pretty much everything narrows down the substance but yuuuk, awful awful night. Again, I would like to say how grateful I am for Matej being there or who knows what would have happened to me.. and also to Caroline. This would know be marked as event number 1.


After waking up and sorting myself out, I didn't feel too bad, just a little exhausted and mentally drained. As we were all talking about it, Ben pipes up that he had been spiked that night also, all because he got that pissed, he fell asleep on a park bench, lost his shoes and got carted back by the Police. Whatever ligthweight.


Right, back to travel day. I don't half go on with myself. 
The 8 of us left and we all got tuk tuk's to the port and made our way to the bus station. Just getting there was a sign of things to come. There were 3 and 4 for each tuk tuk plus bags... I think everyone more or less sat on someone's else's body parts and when it got to the big hill climb, we were told to get off our tuk tuk as he tried to accelerate up it. We wondered if we would see our bags on the other side of the hill.. or whether we would see him roll back down it.. but we had a gooden' and he did well. Then we had Ben, in his own tuk tuk.


We boarded the bus to Iloilo (E-lo E-lo) and 6 hours later we were there, although I am sure I got told it took 2!
We managed to find ourself some accommodation for the night and again, sorting a room for 8 people just didn't seem to be that simple. 
I thought 4 and 4 would be a good way to go?
Caroline and I put our bags in one room and waited to see which of the others would join us, preying it wouldn't be Ben. (At this stage, I know longer care what I say about Ben, and that story will follow. However, we have now discovered, Ben has a very unhealthy obsession/crush with me and we try at all costs to steer very clear of him).
Ben decides to come into our room, asks where I'm sleeping, and as I'm not in his room, he actually physically picks up my bag and starts to move it into his. Hahahahaha I don't think so son. Caroline firmly told him to do one. Weirdo. Luckily, we got Slovenia and Australia as roomies. A standard McDonald's dinner was in order and time to watch some random tv, if I remember rightly, we watched Bambi. Classic.


An early start was needed as we had to find out if we could catch the overnight boat to Cebu, and then we could get to Bohol. An early start for us lot means 11am apparently.. although, this was not particularly our fault. The room had no natural light so we all woke up thinking it was the middle of the night. The only time we saw daylight in that room was when we stuck our heads out the window and looked directly up, and also face to face with bird shit.
After checking out, we find an empty jeepney and load all 8+ bags and ourselves into it and make our way to the port. Luckily, there was a boat that night, otherwise, we would have been in a dead end city for another night watching more Disney films. As the boat didn't leave until the evening, we took another jeepney back to the city, had some lunch, stocked up on booze and loaded up another jeepney back. Anyone else fed up of the word jeepney?
The 6 boys took one cabin and Caroline and I took a lovely little private room for a bit extra so we didn't have to share with any randomers. 
The boat itself, was another world. There were just masses upon masses of beds. Plain, bare bunk beds in their hundreds all over the decks. No covers, no privacy, just a bed pretty much face to face with another stinky human being. Thank god our budgets were still in tne early stages.
It was a fairly tame evening, just simply a few drinks and talking. Early night, early start.


We woke up around 7 and as we were waiting to dock, I was amazed yet also saddened by what I saw. There were around 20-30 locals in their small wooden boats begging for money. If you threw it down, they would try and catch it either in their net, or they would simply dive into the water just to catch a few measly peso's that we were willing to just throw away. Obviously, these measly peso's had much more of a meaning to them. People were doing this for around half an hour and the locals just were not giving up, you could see the desperation in their faces as they looked above waiting to see what direction they had to dive in next. Makes you really think how lucky you are sometimes. 


We docked and booked our 500P ticket over to Bohol. Finally, Ben departed us, and we would now not see him until we flew from Manila to Thailand in a weeks time.
We got the 2 hour boat over to Bohol and I cannot believe I forgot about this next part. It's lucky I got my diary out as this wouldn't have seen the light of day... How oh how could I forget about NUTS HUTS!!! It even deserves it's own entire post.